


she's had her fill of destinies

by frith_in_thorns



Series: who you haven't been yet [2]
Category: October Daye Series - Seanan McGuire
Genre: First Meetings, Fluff, Friendship, Gen, Identity, Missing Scene, Shopping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-27
Updated: 2014-04-27
Packaged: 2018-01-20 22:52:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1528667
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/frith_in_thorns/pseuds/frith_in_thorns
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Missing scene for <i>An Artificial Night</i>.</p><p>May goes shopping for some clothes of her own. Quentin goes with her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	she's had her fill of destinies

Quentin trailed after May down the San Francisco street. He might be pureblood Fae, but just then he was wearing the expression common to the vast majority of teenage boys, mortal or not, who had been ordered to accompany someone else on a clothes-shopping expedition.

It made May unhappy, although she didn’t want to show it. He did, after all, have plenty of good reasons for wanting to be somewhere else instead. Only he hadn’t been issued with a ticket to Blind Michael’s lands this time around, so instead he was stuck taking a Fetch around clothes shops.

“You don’t _have_ to be here, you know,” she said, finally. “I can tell Sylvester you were a great help but I decided to get rid of you.”

He shook his head glumly. “I’ve been ordered to stay with you. Also, if there was no one with you, we wouldn’t know…”

“You wouldn’t know whether Toby’s still alive or not,” May finished for him, as his voice trailed off.

He nodded, only briefly meeting her eyes.

That was very… practical of Sylvester. It was the kind of thing Toby would probably have thought of.

May sighed, and pushed her brown hair back from her face. The street of shops Quentin had led her to, presumably on Sylvester’s instruction, was also very practical. There was an Old Navy store, which she remembered much of Toby’s wardrobe originating in, and a whole row of similar stores. Their window displays looked very sensible. They could definitely do with a sizable dose of colour.

“Do you want to grab something to eat?” she asked. 

Quentin’s interest immediately rose. “Where?”

She waved a hand. “Somewhere more interesting than this. You pick.”

“Well…” he said, looking indecisive, “Don’t you want to get your clothes and stuff first? While we’re here?”

May wrinkled her nose slightly. “Again, can we go somewhere more interesting? These are all so _boring_.”

“They’re what Toby wears,” Quentin said. There was a hint of defensiveness in his quick response. No insult to Toby was permitted, clearly.

“Yes, I know,” May said. “But that’s Toby. I’m not her.”

“You’re her Fetch.”

“Again, _not her_.” She cocked an eyebrow at him. “I’m here, she’s —” She bit off the sentence hastily. _Wow, nice going there._

Quentin turned on his heel abruptly. “There’s a food place this way,” he said, and set a pace that was quick enough to discourage conversation.

The food place sold burritos, with an unlikely-seeming amount of possible fillings. May, still in the process of discovering which tastes she did and didn’t like, managed to assemble a combination of flavours in which was apparently weird enough to bring Quentin out of his dark mood to talk to her again. “You can’t possibly eat that,” he said.

“Watch me.” She bit down on it. She had to admit, it _was_ a little strange — shrimp and sweet potato weren’t the most obvious ingredients to put together — but certainly edible. “Yum.”

“That’s disgusting,” Quentin said, looking at her with newfound respect.

She grinned at him around another mouthful. “Hey, you brought me here.”

He offered her a slight smile. “Toby puts coffee in her cereal,” he said, with the air of sharing a confidence.

“Yeah, I know,” May told him. “Now _that’s_ gross.”

His smile widened in agreement. “Yup.”

May took another large bite. “You see; totally different people,” she said. 

Quentin had somehow already managed to make most of his burrito disappear, via the magic of hungry teenage boys. He swallowed what was in his mouth. "So, what sort of stuff are you looking for?" he asked.

May shrugged, and tried to stop the motion while she was still in the middle of it. Hard to explain that while she could bring up memories of fashion styles from over the past few hundred years, she couldn't tell whether she _liked_ something or not until she'd actually seen it. Like the burrito fillings. "I just want something different from Toby," she said. "So that everyone knows immediately I'm not her." She could work from there to discover what she actually wanted.

(How much concept of individual identity was a Fetch even _meant_ to have?)

Quentin considered about this for a moment. "So, bright colours?"

May grinned at him. "And skirts. Ooh, _glitter._ "

"How about a badge saying, _I'm not Toby_?" Quentin suggested.

She swatted at him; he ducked effortlessly. 

Her attention was abruptly caught by the entry of a woman with short-chopped blue and pink hair. "Excuse me," she called, bouncing off her stool towards her, "I love your hairstyle! Where did you get it done?"

The woman was possibly the first person all day not to look taken aback by May's cheerful enthusiasm. "At Judy's, two streets over that way," she said.

"Thanks!" May turned around, to find that Quentin was already standing by the door expectantly. "Okay, new mission."

They found the right street without any trouble. To May's delight, as well as the decidedly disreputable-looking hair salon, thrift and indie shops rubbed shoulders with each other, their windows showing off a truly delightful amount of colour. " _Perfect._ "

"If you come back with a load of stuff from here Etienne will have a heart attack," Quentin said, happily.

That probably shouldn't be an incentive. Probably.

"What will Sylvester think, though?" she asked, suddenly a little worried. It was all very well deciding that she was going to assert her independence, but she was still running unexpectedly into walls of Toby's emotions. Toby cared what Sylvester thought about her; cared so deeply that May couldn't not care too.

Quentin screwed up one side of his mouth, considering this carefully. "I think… he just wants you to be _you_ ," he said, finally. "Just like you were saying to me before."

"Really?" May asked, a little doubtfully. "He doesn't really even know who I am yet. I mean, _I'm_ still figuring it out."

"Yeah, but…" It was a thought he was having difficulty finding words for; he fiddled with his shirt-sleeves a bit. "He's good at letting you to do that. Trust me."

May nodded seriously. "Okay."

Quentin grinned at her. Definitely at _her_ , not at an imitation-Toby. "You know what you're looking for yet?"

"Still nope," she said, cheerfully, and started for one of the shops at random, pulling him along in her wake. "But I'll know what I like when I see it."

And she couldn't wait to find out.


End file.
